EGCS on MIPS

Hi all,
people keep asking me about egcs / gcc 2.8.x for Linux/MIPS. Before I
even attempt to work on that I'd like to know if anybody has attempted
to use one of these compilers on IRIX or another MIPS operating system.
Experiences, especially reliability? As I understand the problems people
have with these compilers on their Linux/i386 machines are only mostly
caused by the Intel backend?
Thanks,
Ralf